Vehicle suspension dampers, or shock absorbers, of a vehicle's suspension system are used to limit the oscillatory behavior of a vehicle's wheels or body. Dampers can lose their effectiveness, for example, at extreme temperatures due to a change in viscosity of the hydraulic fluid passing through the dampers. This may occur, for example, during burnouts, as the temperature of the spinning tires increases at high rates due to friction. In some instances, changes in the viscosity of the hydraulic fluid passing through dampers may cause the motion of the vehicle to change toward an undamped, or oscillatory motion which results in, for example, increased tire wear, increased suspension wear, and overall degraded vehicle handling.
In modern vehicle's, when a driven wheel of the vehicle is caused to spin by a vehicle operator, in particular over a longer period of time (e.g., burnout event), increased wear on the driveline between the engine and the driven wheel may occur. This may result in wheel hop in the driveline of the vehicle during the burnout event. Wheel hop occurs when the driven wheels of the vehicle's suspension system are caused to oscillate torsionally, producing vertical and angular displacements in the vehicle, that is, the grip of the driven wheels of the vehicle varies between gripping acceleration and wheel spin.
Limiting the movement of the wheel relative to the chassis can prevent or limit wheel hop. It is, therefore, advantageous for vehicle control systems, which enhance vehicle handling and passenger safety, to request an increased damping force of the vehicle's suspension dampers, to compensate for a consistent force capability from the vehicle's suspension dampers during a burnout event to prevent wheel hop. It may be advantageous, therefore, to provide a vehicle damper monitoring system that can automatically monitor vehicle systems to detect burnout and control damping force during such events to prevent wheel hop. It may be further advantageous to provide vehicle damper monitoring systems and methods which use existing vehicle sensors for this purpose.